Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Court Denies Motion For Mistrial In Nixzmary Case

NEW YORK -- The bruises -- carefully documented with Polaroid snapshots -- nearly covered 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown's body: her back, her arms, around both eyes and neck.Powerful Video Played In Court MondayConfronted with the photos while being interviewed by authorities, her stepfather, Cesar Rodriguez, paused when asked to explain the black eyes.

"She managed to do that to herself," he finally responded.

Jurors at Rodriguez's murder trial in Brooklyn wept on Monday while watching a videotape of his comments -- key evidence in a child brutality case that shocked the city and hastened child welfare reforms.

Rodriguez, 29, has pleaded not guilty to charges he killed Nixzmary on Jan. 11, 2006, with a blow to the head while punishing her for stealing yogurt by putting her head under cold water. The defense claims the girl's mother, who faces a separate trial, was the killer.

On Monday, prosecutors lowered the courtroom lights and played the tape of what they say was a voluntary statement made by Rodriguez shortly after his malnourished daughter's body was discovered.

In a calm voice and with his hands folded, Rodriguez described Nixzmary as a problem child who needed to be bound with duct tape and tied to a chair to keep her from abusing her five siblings in their ramshackle apartment. She also was confined to a room where she used a cat litter box to urinate, he said.

On tape, the defendant admitted beating the victim -- or worse -- as punishment for what he insisted was deviant behavior.

"Sometimes she'd get me real angry, and I used to just throw her ... on the floor," he said. "She was always lying to me about everything."

Believing Nixzmary had pilfered some yogurt from the refrigerator and damaged a computer printer, her stepfather said, he stuck her head under a running bathtub faucet on her last night alive.

"I took her and threw some cold water on her ... to make her think," he said.

Investigators suspect the girl's head was smashed against the faucet.

On tape, Rodriguez offered another theory for what caused the bleeding of the brain and other fatal wounds: "Perhaps it was when I carelessly threw her on the floor."

Why, a prosecutor asked, did Nixzmary weigh only 36 pounds at the time of her death? Her stepfather said he didn't know since, "I fed her."

His last memory of Nixzmary alive? Naked, breathing heavily and moaning on the floor of her room. He never called for help, he said, even though, "I'd never seen her more pale."

When the courtroom lights were turned on, a court officer produced some tissues and passed them into the jury box.

A judge on Monday denied a defense motion for mistrial in the case against Rodriguez.

Attorneys for Rodriguez said they are considering a possible mid-trial appeal.

The court is now considering whether to strike testimony by New York City Police Department Detective Steven Sneider, which caused the trial to be temporarily suspended just after 11 a.m.

In his second day on the witness stand, Sneider said he "confronted" Rodriguez in an interrogation room at the NYPD 79th Precinct stationhouse with a written statement by the defendant's wife. An inference could be drawn by jurors that the wife, Nixzaliz Santiago, had implicated Rodriguez in her own statement to police.

Given that Santiago is also charged with murder in the case but is being tried separately, she has a right to refuse to testify in the current case. Prosecutors are barred under the law from presenting information about an incriminating statement made by the "non-testifying co-defendant," because the defendant in this case does not have the ability to cross-examine the co-defendant.

Defense attorneys immediately objected and demanded a mistrial after Sneider uttered the word "confronted" in front of the jury.Original Article -